An event can achieve its targets and still deserve a harder question: Is it the best use of the organization’s time, budget, and audience attention? Across a global portfolio, familiar programs can compete for the same resources, while new priorities struggle to find space.
In this ELX editorial, we speak with Kim Kopetz, President and CEO of The Opus Group. Drawing on her experience leading a global agency network and her time on the client side at Intel, we explore how leaders can challenge established programs, retire legacy events with care, and decide where to invest next.
Kim: When brands judge events one at a time, they tend to score every event on the same metric, usually pipeline or cost per attendee or lead. But events in a portfolio have different jobs – some bring new people in, some move deals forward, and some retain customers and turn them into advocates. Some exist just to elevate the brand. If you look at events in isolation, you may cut events that actually work well or over-index on events that look busy but don’t move KPIs.
Looking at the whole portfolio helps you see where events support one another, where they compete for attention, and where you’re asking too much of your target audiences or your team.
Kim: I don’t think events survive because of habit as much anymore — with rising costs and complexity, there is much more scrutiny. But often, events that shouldn’t survive do because no one has the time to pause and reflect on why they are doing the event or to get crisp on the outcomes they are trying to deliver. In addition, for large, recurring events, you could already be planning next year's event before this year’s is over. Often, venues are already booked, making it harder to redesign an event within the space you have, so it’s easier just to keep moving.
Internal and even external politics often come into play, particularly with third-party events. I've seen many times when a salesperson negotiates booth space at a customer's event as part of a deal, and then marketing ends up inheriting a six-figure headache with no strategic alignment. Often, internal stakeholders may just like the routine of an annual event. We all know the executives who love to pick the band at the closing party!
But if you ask yourself why we do this event, and the answer is based on history or on one executive’s name versus future outcomes and success metrics, then it's time to re-evaluate.
Kim: Ask who the event serves, what it needs to achieve, and what evidence shows it’s doing that job. Include the fully loaded cost – not only the hard dollars, but your team’s workload and the time you’re asking attendees and executives to spend. Determine the competition in the market for that audience’s budget and bandwidth to attend your event.
Keep the event when the need is clear and it’s delivering results. Redesign it when the need remains, but the experience or format isn’t working, or it’s not delivering the success metrics you need. Combining programs makes them more valuable to the audience. Sharing a venue, reducing executive travel, or other cost efficiencies are important, but if they dilute the event experience for your audience, they may be the most expensive dollars you’ve ever saved.
Retire the event when the need has changed, another program already meets it better, or the resources would accomplish more elsewhere. If you aren’t sure, agree on what you need to learn and measure, ensure you have the capacity to capture that data, and determine when you’ll make the decision. Missing data can’t tell you an event has lost its value.
Kim: Start by understanding what they’re worried about losing. Is it customer access? Time with their team? Visibility for a product or business unit? Sometimes marketplace and internal optics are a real concern, too, and need to be addressed. For instance, "Will people think we are canceling this event because we aren’t doing well financially?”
Then make specific recommendations and anchor them to target business outcomes. Explain what the evidence shows, and what will change or not change. For example, if an important customer gathering is going away, show how those customers will still have a place to connect. It’s not, ”We're killing your dinner series.” It’s more like, “We’re reallocating that budget to host your top 15 target CIOs in an exclusive briefing track at our flagship.” Use data and research to share what is working in the industry and pulse your own attendees for insights. Customer and partner advisory boards are excellent tools for reimagining events.
It also helps to map out your portfolio strategy before debating a particular event and to understand how it all ties together (or doesn’t). This will highlight gaps you may need to fill, and you can choose to sunset an event to create a new or different one that better meets a more active need. People are more willing to consider a difficult recommendation when they understand what “better” looks like and understand the tradeoffs.
Kim: One example we’ve seen frequently is combining a focused program with a larger event. One client ran a developer event series for years before bringing it into their user conference. The benefit is straightforward: you share the investment in the venue and production, as well as larger-ticket items like keynote speakers and entertainment, while also providing a new opportunity to cross-sell across the ecosystem and develop deeper community connections.
The other is changing the shape of a flagship user conference or global kickoff, sometimes through smaller regional meetings or a more digital-first approach. Regional meetings create room for local conversations, hands-on labs, and closer connections that are harder to deliver at scale. In addition, there is less “out of office” time for people, which is effective from a time and money perspective.
Lastly, we have seen clients choose not to participate in an industry trade show and instead use those dollars to create their own proprietary event. This allows them to better control the messaging, the timing, and the brand experience for their customers without competing for mindshare, which can be very expensive at large shows.
Kim: Start with what people need from each event. A flagship gives a broad community access to major announcements, leaders, experts, and one another. It’s something that you can amplify digitally, such as streaming a keynote or product launch. But a global flagship should be a global event, not just a regional one that people have to fly to from around the world. It should feel materially different.
A regional event can reach people who won’t or can’t travel to the flagship and offer conversations and case studies more relevant to their market.
There’s no fixed ratio. You should look at where your prospects and customers are, where your sales teams are, where the partner and channel ecosystem is, where the business needs or wants to grow, and what people are willing and able to attend.
It is important that your local teams have a voice in these decisions too. They know which audiences are missing and what will bring them into the room. And use data and more data. We once had a client who wanted to go to 10 different cities in the US, and they just picked the largest markets. Once we dug into the data on prospects and channel support, they actually needed to be in Detroit, not Chicago, and needed to remove New York and add Boston.
Kim: First, clearly define your event objectives and audiences you need to reach. At Intel, we would look at sales and marketing objectives (product/brand awareness or consideration, thought leadership, ecosystem enablement, lead gen, account penetration, etc.), the audience (IT decision-makers, channel partners, consumers, etc.), and the industry (enterprise, developer, public sector, etc.). This differs for every brand.
Then determine how you want those priorities weighted for your portfolio. This will not only help determine whether you are attending or delivering the right events to the right audience, but also help you design the format and content to best address your marketing and sales objectives. For example, if your priority for 2027 is deeper connection with the C-suite, then create more meaningful engagement opportunities for that audience, such as an executive summit, or sponsor and activate at events that target that group. If it is about thought leadership, have more speaker placements at industry events. Format and strategy must follow intent.
The decision to retire or reimagine an event reaches beyond the calendar and historical track record. It asks leaders to be clear about why you are doing events at all. What is your portfolio trying to achieve, whose needs does it serve, and where can your resources make the greatest difference? A formalized framework of objectives and a regular, disciplined review give established programs fair hearing while leaving room for new priorities. For global event leaders, the challenge is to make those choices with enough evidence to explain them and enough care to preserve the relationships that matter.
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About The Opus Group
The Opus Group is a purpose-built network of leading marketing agencies that deliver world-class experiential, event, and brand solutions. The Opus Group’s industry-renowned, highly-awarded agencies, including Opus Agency, MAS, and Verve, provide scalable, end-to-end solutions designed to drive action and impact. With a global footprint and specialized expertise, The Opus Group partners with over 70 global companies, including the world’s most influential brands. To see the results our teams deliver, visit theopusgroup.com.
About Event Leaders Exchange (ELX)
Event Leaders Exchange (ELX) is an invitation-only, member-led community for senior corporate event leaders at the world’s largest organisations. By fostering collaboration and shared insight, ELX supports leadership development and drives meaningful progress across the industry. For more information, visit https://www.eventleaders.com/.